Parental investment is the amount of energy, resources and information parents give to an offspring at a cost to them. In pastoral societies parenting strategies mark the border between fitness-maximising and wealth-accumulation. This study investigates parental strategies in two nomadic herding societies with different ecology and marriage markets, the Juhaina Arabs and Dazagada of Bahr el Gazal of West Chad. This study is based on interviews and anthropometric data I collected between Jan 2003 and Apr 2004. In herding economies, marriage markets involve the payment of a bridewealth by the...